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It's the media's fault. That's out of context. Never said it in the first place.

Donald Trump's claim Friday that he was merely being "sarcastic" in accusing President Barack Obama of establishing a terrorist group was his latest attempt to blame others for the uproar over what he says. It's an instinct that Trump's opponents say a president can't possess. Some Republicans seem to have the same concern.

This time, it followed two days of critical headlines and Democratic outrage over Trump's claim that Obama was the "founder" of the Islamic State group. As Trump repeated the claim more than a dozen times, interviewers sought to ensure Trump wasn't being misconstrued. Surely, they offered, he meant Obama's policies had enabled the extremist group's rise.

"No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do," Trump said, using one acronym for the group. (His remark comes at 15:26 of the interview .)

Trump Booed Leaving New York Times

President Elect Donald Trump is booed as he walks through the lobby of The New York Times Building after a 75-minute meeting with Times journalists. The lobby of the Times building is open to the public, and a large crowd had gathered by the time he departed.

(Published Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016)

Then an about-face Friday. "THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?" he tweeted.

Or was he being sarcastic about the sarcasm? Hours later, he told a rally in Pennsylvania he was "obviously being sarcastic — but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you."

That it took Trump two days to walk back his widely debunked remark — and then walk back the walk-back — was worrying for Republicans who see such missteps as playing to Democrat Hillary Clinton's advantage. Equally worrying for some was the fact that he again would not take responsibility for his words.

Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, said there's a common-sense playbook for dealing with political slip-ups: "Stop the bleeding and put it behind you by apologizing.

"That's what normal candidates do," he went on. "However, normal candidates don't careen from one self-inflicted wound to another on an hourly basis."

It was only two days earlier that Trump blamed the media for making much ado about nothing after he suggested during a rally that gun rights enthusiasts might find a way to stop Clinton if elected.

Trump Takes Meetings at His New Jersey Golf Club

President-elect Trump interviewed more than a dozen candidates for his administration at his New Jersey golf club over the weekend, including Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani, Chris Christie and Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who has been tough on immigration, and others.

(Published Monday, Nov. 21, 2016)

Clinton, whose lead over Trump has widened in recent polls of the most competitive states, has seized on those and other eyebrow-raising comments to portray the reality TV star as lacking the temperament to run the nation — Trump has his own argument for why she's unfit to do so. She's hammered him for avoiding accountability for his actions.

To that end, Clinton's campaign on Friday intensified pressure on Trump to release his tax returns, while disclosing her 2015 filings and a decade of returns from her running mate. The filing shows that the Clintons earned $10.6 million and paid a federal tax rate of 34.2 percent last year.

Trump has refused to make his filings public, saying they're under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he'll release them only once that review is complete. All major U.S. presidential candidates in modern history have released their returns.

Almost never does Trump admit error. One exception came this month when he acknowledged a video he said showed a plane carrying U.S. cash to Iran was actually a plane carrying U.S. hostages who were being released.